Lesson 2

Today we started working on our dreams, taking a dream that we have had and  transformed it into a physical theatre solo piece. We started by turning up our dreams, making them more extreme each time, we did this by increasing the sounds, exaggerating every part of our body so it was so over the top and crazy. This was good because it helped us to be able to see the full potential we had with our physicalised dreams. It was able to take us out of our comfort zones and make us feel completely stupid, which now I think as a class we can do things like that again and we wont be so embarrassed.

Our next task was to create a machine, we had to choose a movement from our piece and join the machine when we thought the time was right. Slowly everyone was part of the machine and it was so funny to hear all the sounds we were making it was very effective. As we went on Sir told us to bring up our movements to the next level. We all had to push ourselves to the extreme giving it our all, and by the end we were all sweating.  This was a good excercise, as it showed us how what we can do we our pieces and how we can make them work all together. It also helped us to think about how our mini dream part could fit into the piece and how others can work around ours.

This lesson we also had a company called Frantic Assembly come in and give us a workshop. We started of with an exercise which we had to say someones name in a circle and you go into their space while they say someones name. We then made it harder and we didnt say someones name instead we made eye contact with someone. This helped us to pay closer attention to people and feel more comfortable with making eye contact with people.

We did other exercises like running an obstacle course with a partner next to you but doing it in sync, this helped us to be aware of others and the space we are in. We also did an exercise where we were in lines of 5 one behind the other and we each had to clap a pattern and each time we got to someone at the ends it would change. This improved our concentration and listening skills, so we could prepare for when to clap and actually do the pattern correctly. All these exercises can help us with our performance skills, like being aware of people and making connections with them without verbally speaking to them, having spacial awareness, and concentrating on everything that is happening around us.

We then had to get into partners and lead each other round the room, one with their eyes closed, this was to gain each others trust and become comfortable with them. Then we had to lead someone with a body and making a part of their body move in one direction until you stopped them. Finally we created a piece, me and Antonia started doing ours and realised that it told a story without us even planning it. Ours told a story of two people who are in a relationship, one of them loves the other as one does not. It shows how at the end the person who was in love with the other realises that she is not loved and is all alone. I find it very interesting how from just controlling someone by pushing parts of their body, you can create a whole story.

Overall I learnt a lot from Frantic Assemble. I developed many skills, and had a lot of fun doing it.